And yet.
Lin Mu — the very target of that search — sat calmly in his seat, watching the fierce exchange on the arena floor with an unhurried gaze.
Not a single thread of alertness stirred within him.
After all, his progress in unlocking the Black Bone King's inheritance was far behind Li Mang, who held the Bone Scepter in hand.
And his Rank 2 upper stage cultivation meant he had no hope of detecting a deliberate, concealed probe from a peak Rank 3 expert.
He was like a blind rabbit, completely unaware of the hawk circling overhead, still grazing with its head bowed.
But that was only the calm as seen from Lin Mu's perspective.
From Li Mang's vantage point on the high platform, what was unfolding at this very moment was deeply, profoundly strange.
The Sparse Shadow Gu — that peculiar worm — was performing its extraordinary function to the fullest.
Within Li Mang's vast, invisible sweeping net, the moment the probing wave drew close enough to touch Lin Mu's body, it was as though it had struck a surface of impossible smoothness — frictionless as a soap bubble.
Utterly strange. Utterly seamless.
The probing wave simply tilted and slid off Lin Mu's body, passing right over him without producing so much as a flicker of pause or rebound.
In Li Mang's frantic, ever-expanding sweeps across the arena, Lin Mu had in fact already been scanned four or five times over.
But every single time —
Li Mang's subconscious, his soul sense, and the razor-sharp attention driven by his desperate craving were all forcibly warped and rewritten by the Sparse Shadow Gu's workings.
Those ghost-fire eyes had passed over the section of stands where Lin Mu sat multiple times already.
Yet each time, his mind registered Lin Mu as naturally and effortlessly as it would a stone, a pillar, or a meaningless pocket of empty air — and moved on without a second thought.
Seen without seeing. Heard without hearing.
This was the unreasonable, inexplicable wonder of a truly extraordinary Gu worm.
After several rounds of high-intensity full-arena sweeping —
Up on the high platform —
Beads of sweat the size of soybeans had broken out across Li Mang's gaunt, withered face.
He gripped the Bone Scepter with crushing force, his breathing grown heavy from the brutal drain on his Primeval Essence.
But within those deep-set eyes burned something close to utter disbelief.
Nothing.
He had found nothing.
The entire martial arena — the young elites competing on the platform, the patrolling deacons and elders along the perimeter, even the common mortals who had gathered to watch — he had swept through all of them.
Nothing. Not a single thing capable of resonating with the scepter.
"Impossible. This is absolutely impossible."
After the crushing disappointment came a wave of dread that he could not hold back.
"The scepter's resonance has never been wrong. Just days ago, I felt it clearly — someone within Black Blood Stockade's territory had activated the inheritance."
"That person is absolutely hiding somewhere in this stronghold."
"Then why can't I find them? Why?!"
Li Mang ground his teeth, his mind churning like machinery on the verge of collapse.
Then —
A thought seized him. So terrible that his back was drenched in cold sweat in an instant.
"Could it be..."
"They already knew I was coming? Already knew my purpose? And so they used some method to conceal themselves completely?!"
The moment that thought took root, the hands gripping the scepter began to tremble violently.
This was devastating.
This meant the entire dynamic of the situation had been turned completely on its head.
Before, he had been in the shadows, scepter in hand, while the unknown holder of the other half of the inheritance stood exposed in the light.
But now —
He had become the exposed target standing in plain sight, while the one who held the inheritance had slipped, with cunning precision, into the darkness.
And worse still —
If the other party truly had the means to hide themselves... then every single person present in this vast martial arena had, in one instant, become a suspect again.
Not just Lin Yan and Lin Xue, who had already been scanned —
Even —
The corner of Li Mang's eye twitched violently.
His gaze darted sideways in barely concealed alarm toward Lin Cang beside him. Even he could be the hidden mastermind behind all of this.
If it was Lin Cang...
BOOM——!!
At the very moment that suspicion was driving Li Mang to the edge of madness —
A deafening crash, like two small mountains colliding, erupted from the center of the martial arena.
The shockwave, laden with flying dust and stone fragments, jolted Li Mang violently out of his spiraling thoughts.
He snapped his head up toward the platform.
In the time he had spent absorbed in his scanning, the situation on the arena floor had shifted entirely.
Lin Xue of Black Blood Stockade had won two consecutive bouts and stepped down of her own accord.
The one who had taken her place as arena holder was the "Iron Turtle" of Black Blood Stockade's Storage Hall — Lin Ze.
But Lin Ze, at this moment —
He was sent flying in a spray of blood, tumbling off the edge of the platform like a kite with its string cut, hurled by a savage and overwhelming force before crashing hard onto the stone slabs below.
And standing atop that high platform —
Was a young man with a full head of white hair, eyes blazing with untamed arrogance, like a beast that had just broken free of its cage.
White Bone Stockade's young lord — Li Huang.
Li Huang's strength had never been inferior to Lin Feng's from before.
In the exchanges just now, he had poured his Primeval Essence out without restraint.
That overbearing physical power, combined with his explosive output, carried faint traces of a terrifying Rank 2 presence.
It was with that unreasonable, brute-force dominance that he had driven his bone spear straight through Lin Ze's prized defensive shell and shattered it.
"The young lord is mighty!"
"White Bone is undefeatable!"
Watching their young lord take the stage and immediately demonstrate such crushing dominance, the White Bone Stockade delegation — who had spent the entire day swallowing humiliation under Black Blood Stockade's overwhelming momentum — finally exhaled.
They could hold it in no longer.
Cheers and wild celebration erupted from them like a dam breaking, shaking the air.
For this one moment, the visiting side's roar drowned out even the home crowd's noise.
On any other day, watching his son shine so brilliantly on the stage, Li Mang would have stroked his beard and laughed, seizing the chance to mock Lin Cang without mercy.
But now —
Faced with this sudden, sweeping victory, Li Mang felt not a shred of joy. His complexion had only grown paler.
He had just forced himself to pull his thoughts together and return to his calculations —
When he snapped his head up and found the light before him had abruptly darkened.
Black Blood Stockade's Patriarch Lin Cang, and the Grand Elder Lin Zhen.
The two most powerful figures in Black Blood Stockade — the ones who held absolute authority over life and death — had slipped away from their seats at some unknown moment and now stood squarely, silently, directly in front of Li Mang.
"...?!"
Li Mang's pupils contracted sharply. He swept a wary glance around him.
To his alarm, he realized that the roaring, thunderous cheering that had filled the air moments ago had been completely cut off.
The crowd outside was still cheering and celebrating with wild abandon — but between the three of them, not a single sound could be heard.
Lin Cang had quietly drawn a barrier around them using a Gu worm.
Lin Cang looked down at Li Mang from above, his face — hard as stone — stripped of every trace of the earlier pleasantness.
In this moment, he was like a tiger that had descended from the mountain.
Like a great iron tower, bearing down with crushing weight.
"You old bastard."
Lin Cang's voice was ice-cold, carrying a pressure that made the air itself tremble.
"From the moment you sat down on this platform, you've been restless and sweating, those two eyes of yours darting around like a thief's."
"Did you really think I was blind? That I couldn't see it?!"
Lin Cang leaned in sharply, driving his gaze like a nail into Li Mang's pupils, killing intent laid bare.
"Your son is up there making a name for himself right now, and you — you old dog — look completely indifferent. Not even a flicker of interest."
"So speak."
"You went to all this trouble to arrange this ridiculous friendly tournament, found every excuse to get yourself into the heart of my Black Blood Stockade..."
"What exactly are you scheming, Li Mang?!"